And assert an inward honor by denying outward show”.

“Nay, your Silence”, said I, “truly holds her symbol rose but slackly,

Yet she holds it — or would scarcely be a Silence to our ken!

And your nobles wear their ermine on the outside, or walk blackly

In the presence of the social law, as most ignoble men.

“Let the poets dream such dreaming! Madam, in these British Islands,

’Tis the substance that wanes ever, ’tis the symbol that exceeds;

Soon we shall have nought but symbol! and for statues like this Silence,

Shall accept the rose’s image, — in another case, the weed’s”.

“Not so quickly!” she retorted, — “I confess where’er you go, you

Find for things, names;—shows for actions, and pure gold for honor clear;

But when all is run to symbol in the Social, I will throw you

The world’s book which now reads dryly, and sit down with Silence here”.

Half in playfulness she spoke, I thought, and half in indignation;

Friends who listened laughed her words off while her lovers deemed her fair;

A fair woman — flushed with feeling, in her noble-lighted station

Near the statue’s white reposing, — and both bathed in sunny air!

With the trees round, not so distant but you heard their vernal murmur,

And beheld in light and shadow the leaves in and outward move;

And the little fountain leaping toward the sun-heart to be warmer,

And recoiling in a tremble from the too much light above.

’Tis a picture for remembrance! and thus, morning after morning,

Did I follow as she drew me by the spirit to her feet,—

Why, her greyhound followed also! dogs — we both were dogs for scorning,—

To be sent back when she pleased it, and her path lay through the wheat.

And thus, morning after morning, spite of vows and spite of sorrow,

Did I follow at her drawing, while the week-days passed along;

Just to feed the swans this noontide, or to see the fawns to-morrow,

Or to teach the hill-side echo some sweet Tuscan in a song.

Ay, for sometimes on the hill-side, while we sat down in the gowans,

With the forest green behind us, and its shadow cast before;

And the river running under; and across it from the rowans

A brown partridge whirring near us, till we felt the air it bore,—

There, obedient to her praying, did I read aloud the poems

Made by Tuscan flutes, or instruments more various of our own;

Read the pastoral parts of Spenser, — or the subtle interflowings

Found in Petrarch’s sonnets, — here’s the book — the leaf is folded down!—

Or at times a modern volume, — Wordsworth’s solemn-thoughted idyl,

Howitt’s ballad-verse, or Tennyson’s enchanted revery,—

Or from Browning some “Pomegranate”, which, if cut deep down the middle,

Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity.

Or at times I read there, hoarsely, some new poem of my making,—

Poets ever fail in reading their own verses to their worth,—

For the echo in you breaks upon the words which you are speaking,

And the chariot-wheels jar in the gate through which you drive them forth.

After, when we were grown tired of books, the silence round us flinging

A slow arm of sweet compression, felt with beatings at the breast,

She would break out on a sudden, in a gush of woodland singing,

Like a child’s emotion in a god, — a naiad tired of rest.

Oh, to see or hear her singing! scarce I know which is divinest,—

For her looks sing too, — she modulates her gestures on the tune;

And her mouth stirs with the song, like song; and when the notes are finest,

’Tis the eyes that shoot out vocal light, and seem to swell them on.

Then we talked, — oh, how we talked! her voice, so cadenced in the talking,

Made another singing — of the soul! a music without bars,—

While the leafy sounds of woodlands, humming round where we were walking,

Brought interposition worthy sweet, — as skies about the stars.

And she spake such good thoughts natural, as if she always thought them,—

And had sympathies so rapid, open, free as bird on branch,

Just as ready to fly east as west, whichever way besought them,

In the birchen wood a chirrup, or a cock-crow in the grange.

In her utmost rightness there is truth, — and often she speaks lightly,

Has a grace in being gay, which even mournful souls approve,

For the root of some grave earnest thought is under-struck so rightly,

As to justify the foliage and the waving flowers above.

And she talked on, — we talked, rather! upon all things — substance — shadow—

Of the sheep that browsed the grasses, — of the reapers in the corn,—

Of the little children from the schools, seen winding through the meadow,—

Of the poor rich world beyond them, still kept poorer by its scorn.